Composer easy find for Apatow

Filmmaker works with Workman on 'Greek'

When Judd Apatow decided to do a film in which music would play a larger role than in any of his earlier pictures, he didn’t have to look very far for a composer.

The job went to Lyle Workman – the guitarist, session player and former band member with Bourgeois Tagg, Todd Rundgren, Beck and Sting — who had already created music for the Apatow factory’s “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Superbad” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

“Get Him to the Greek,” a “Sarah Marshall” spinoff, turns on the comeback journey of rock star Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand in both films. Brand re-teams with Jonah Hill, who played a different character in the earlier film but stars as Brand’s comic foil in “Greek.”

Apatow and helmer Nick Stoller, along with music editor and supervisor Jonathan Karp, insisted on musical authenticity. “They wanted to have a strong set of songs to choose from that would be performed in the film,” says Workman, “so they enlisted a slew of songwriters. We recorded about 20.” Many are in the film, others on the soundtrack CD.

The songs had to stand on their own and not be “dumbed down for the movie,” says Workman. “We raised the bar really high. Everything was recorded in a studio’s controlled environment, just like you’d do a record. The songs were complete entities unto themselves, written and recorded in advance of the filming. That’s why I was on this movie for a year. Usually I’m not on that long.”

Once recorded, the songs had to be integrated into the picture, which includes two major filmed concert performances — one outdoors at Rockefeller Center in New York, where Brand’s character performs for a “Today” show audience, and one inside the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, where he stages his big comeback.

Syncing up the recorded music with the concert footage was a team effort. “Lyle and I were both there on set, playing it back through loudspeakers,” says Karp. “I had all the tracks in my Pro Tools (digital audio) system. Along with (film editor) Bill Kerr, Judd and Nick, we figure out what the picture cut would be.”

Technically, Workman didn’t need to be at the filmed performances, but he went anyway. “I was in the studio with Russell when he recorded,” he says, “and there’s a comfort factor in having that same support on stage.”

Workman’s credit on “Greek” is “original music by,” but in essence he was the film’s composer as well. He did the entire underscore, co-wrote many of the songs, including the number “Fuck Your Shit Up,” which expresses the attitude of Sean Combs, who steals every scene in which he appears.

Workman is now in Nashville working on a record for Dutch artist Ilse DeLange. Karp has begun work on Apatow’s next project, starring Kristen Wiig.